


everything i wanted

by brahe



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Caring Danny "Danno" Williams, Episode: s10e22 Aloha (Goodbye), Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, M/M, Post-Season/Series 10, Steve McGarrett Has Issues, Steve McGarrett Needs a Hug, Steve McGarrett and the Search for Peace™, basically plotless, danny is a good bro, it's more like a retcon than an au, luckily he has a danny, sort of 5+1, sort of post canon, sort of post finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23678737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brahe/pseuds/brahe
Summary: "I was just wondering," Steve says. "Where do you go, when you need to feel at peace?""At peace?" Danny repeats, thoughtful. He stays quiet for a while – longer than Steve expected he would.Steve looks at him across the seats, half to make sure Danny's still in the car with him, and meets his gaze. Danny's watching him, eyes soft and careful."I'll show you," Danny tells him, sounding as if he's decided on something. "Tonight. After dinner."Or,Steve searches for peace and figures himself out with a little help along the way.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 28
Kudos: 191





	everything i wanted

**Author's Note:**

> _i had a dream  
>  i got everything i wanted  
> But when i wake up, i see  
> You with me  
> And you say, "As long as i'm here  
> No one can hurt you"  
> _

Junior takes him to a street market just far enough from central Honolulu that it's really only locals and a handful of the more adventurous tourists. It's busy but not chaotic – the day is nice, breezy and warm without being too hot, and most people here just seem to be happy to be outside.

The sounds of the market are a steady whitenoise; vendors bartering, a local beekeeper's charges humming, children laughing, meat sizzling on a blacktop.

Junior leans back on the bench they've conquered and closes his eyes.

"I think it's the people," Junior tells him when Steve asks why here. "If I need to remember why we do what we do, but also if I need to remember what casual happiness sounds like." He opens his eyes and looks around. "The biggest worry here is being too late to the baker's stall. It slows me down."

Steve sits back, too, and gets lost in the scene, for a moment – lets the sounds wash over him, feels the sun on his skin. It's nice, the kind of busy calm Danny's at home in, and Steve finds nearly as much comfort in that thought. It feels like Hawai'i, here with all these other people who call this place home, and it reminds Steve how lucky he is to have found a place where he's happy to be sedentary.

"Thank you," Steve says, when they climb back in his truck. Junior looks more relaxed than when they came, his shoulders less tense, his eyes less clouded.

Junior looks at him with a shrug and a small smile. "It's not for everyone," he says, because Steve's pretty easy to read. Steve nods.

"But still," he says. "Thanks for showing me this." He feels like he knows Junior that much better as they drive away, and he makes a note to come with him to the Wednesday markets more often.

——

Adam takes him up a mountain. It takes them the better half of the morning to get to the top, and once they're all the way up, Steve feels like he could touch the sky.

There's a total panoramic view of the island from here, rolling green that drops into the jewel-blue sea. The edges of Oahu drop gently into the sea, and he can see almost the entire border of the island. Today's sky is bright and cloudless, and Steve can count on one hand the number of times he's felt so _small_ like this.

Not the bad kind of small, but the kind of small you feel when you look up and find the Milky Way takes up half the sky, or when you're falling through the wispy ends of clouds at terminal velocity and all you can see is blue. The kind of small that makes you thankful, and thoughtful, that tugs on your chest if you let it, that could terrify you if you aren't careful. The kind of small that feels like you've discovered something vital to the human race – like you've discovered what it means to exist alongside the truly epic landscape around you, to be a _person_ , beyond the here and now and the oxygen in your lungs.

When Steve finishes turning around, gaze landing back on Adam, Adam's watching him with a grin. "You feel it."

Steve nods. "I feel it."

He feels – grounded, here. The dirt under his feet used to be under the ocean, and before that, under the crust of the Earth; but now it's here, and so is he, and it's humbling at the same time it's exhilarating.

"It's impossible for me to think about anything when I'm up here," Adam tells him. "It's just me and the sun and the sea and the breeze. Nothing can touch me."

Steve gets thath. When you've been around like the two of them have, you have to find somewhere you can unwind, let go, where nobody can even get close to you. Somewhere safe.

And while Steve doesn't feel _peace_ here, he feels relaxed in a way he can't find outside of the Adirondack chairs on his beach. It's a different kind than he's looking for, but he'll remember the spot, anyway.

——

Tani doesn't take him anywhere.

It's late afternoon when Steve asks her, the two of them in Steve's office, and she doesn't seem surprised. She looks at him for a moment, the kind of studying expression on her face that makes him think of Danny.

"I don't go anywhere," she tells him, simply, with a shrug. "I don't need to." She waves a hand at the room around them, and gives him the gentle, understanding half-smile that makes her look nearly twice her age. Steve's still surprised, sometimes, by how old her soul is. "This is it."

And, perhaps, Steve could've seen that coming. There was once upon a time Steve maybe felt the same way, back in his early days of Five-0 when running the task force was less than half as much stress as he was dealing with in the SEALs. Back when he didn't really know Danny and when he was keeping his team an arm's length away without really meaning to.

But it makes sense, for her, and Steve tells her as much. "It suits you," he adds, and she preens, however subtly, under his praise.

In his prouder moments, he sees pieces of himself in her, mixed with so much of Danny.

If he has to leave Five-0 to someone else, there could be worse hands, by far.

"I know this place isn't, for you, though," she says, "and you're probably asking in the hopes that what works for someone else will work for you, too." She looks at him across the desk, head tilted just a little – a tick she's picked up from Danny, Steve notes, with something tight in his chest.

Her smile takes on something a little sadder. "It doesn't work that way," she tells him. "No matter how much we want it to." She looks down at her hands where she's fiddling with her fingers, and when she turns back to Steve, there's an understanding in the lines of her face much deeper than Steve expected it to be.

"No," Steve agrees, somewhere between forlorn and resigned. He glances at the painting he keeps on the wall, at the ship in such a tumultuous ocean, and can't help but feel the connection. "No, it doesn't."

"Have you asked Danny yet?" Tani asks him, on her way out, her hand on the door handle. She's watching him carefully, in a way that reminds Steve of the schoolteachers that pushed him to be better.

He debates lying for about half a second, but Tani has the same ability to see through him that Danny does, and lying to the team has never sat well with him, anyway.

"No," he admits, but Tani doesn't seem surprised. She hums, and she stares at him for another moment. He expects her to ask why not, but she just shakes her head and turns back to the door.

"Stop avoiding it," she tells him, opening the door. "I suspect you'll find more than you expect to."

The door swings closed behind her with the sound of blinds clanging against glass, and Steve stares after her, unseeing, for a long time.

——

He's hesitating in asking Danny – stalling, maybe. He almost does twice before backing out, and he knows that by now Danny's getting suspicious, and he'll push if Steve doesn't do it soon. Steve's curiosity is also kind of killing him, and he breaks early on a Friday afternoon when they're headed home for the weekend.

"You're thinking rather loudly," Danny tells him, rolling his head along the headrest to look at Steve in the driver's seat. They've got the windows down, and Danny's hand's out the window, fingers playing with the wind. It squeezes something familiar around Steve's heart – the simple, carefree act of a hand out the car window, and the fact that it's Danny. It's always the fact that it's Danny.

Steve glances at him, and he's got that soft kind of half smile he usually saves for his kids, and honestly, Steve really is just a man after all.

Danny sits up a little straighter during Steve's silence. "What's going on, babe?"

Steve shakes his head. "It's okay, I promise," he says. "It's dumb. I just –" He takes a breath, and he's not even sure what's holding him back. They've talked about what Steve's been feeling lately, lost and adrift in a deceptively wild sea, and it's _Danny_ , Danny who tells Steve _I love you_ more than Steve's own parents ever did, Danny who's always encouraged Steve to talk about his feelings and has never once made fun of them. _Danny_ , who's spent nearly every day of the last ten years by his side.

"I was just wondering," Steve says. "Where do you go, when you need to feel at peace?"

He sees Danny relax back into the seat from the corner of his eye, which puts Steve at ease when he hadn't even realized he had tensed alongside Danny.

"At peace?" Danny repeats, thoughtful. He stays quiet for a while – longer than Steve expected he would. He figured Danny would tell him something like _with my kids_ or _jersey_ if he was feeling snarky, but instead he's gone silent.

Steve looks at him across the seats, half to make sure Danny's still in the car with him, and meets his gaze. Danny's watching him, eyes soft and careful.

"I'll show you," Danny tells him, sounding as if he's decided on something. He turns back to look out his window, wiggling his fingers again in the wind. "Tonight. After dinner."

—

"The most at peace I've ever felt," Danny says, sitting back in his Adirondack chair. He digs his toes into the sand and turns his eyes on the sunset.

Dinner was a casual affair of grilled chicken and Danny's grandma's pasta salad, and there's enough leftovers in the fridge for both of them to have lunch tomorrow. He's always enjoyed sharing a kitchen with Steve, and still does, after everything. It's easy, like breathing, like everything else they do. Danny's never fit so well with another person before, and it terrifies him, sometimes, how entwined they are, how much hold Steve has over him.

Danny's never really been one for fate or destiny, but if there was ever something to make a believer out of him, Steve and the way he's everything Danny could ever think to wish for would be it.

"Yeah?" Steve asks, prompting him to continue. Danny looks over at him.

"No, I'm telling you." He waves a hand around, between them and towards the sea, gentle waves rolling up closer to their toes every time they come in. "This, right here. This is it, babe."

Steve is kind of gaping at him in a way that looks like he's trying to be covert in his surprise, and it would be funny if the clear shock on his face didn't tug at Danny's heart.

Danny turns back to the horizon. "There's varying degrees of peace, of course," he continues, because Danny Williams has only ever had a short answer to three things in his life, and this isn't one of them. "Friday nights are more peaceful than Tuesday nights. So are case-closed nights." He pauses to take a sip from his beer, and he rolls his head over to look at Steve, who's sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring into the sea with his brows furrowed as if he's trying to figure out what Danny's telling him. "The most at peace I ever feel, though, is when we're sitting here on a Saturday night, and my kids are asleep in your house, and I know they're safe, and the team is safe, and I know you're safe. And you're here, sitting next to me, and maybe we're talking or maybe we're just listening to the waves."

Steve finally looks over, at Danny and his soft eyes, the barely-there smile he saves for when he's being truly sincere, and he's pretty sure Danny can see that his eyes are a little glassy.

"I –" Steve starts, and his voice is high and strained, and Danny's heart clenches at the sound. Steve shakes his head. "Danny Williams, at peace in Hawai'i?" he says, and it's a coward's way out, a paper-thin attempt to shift away from the feelings bubbling up at the edges. Danny allows it for now – he's been around Steve long enough to know the boil-over won't take long.

"Don't tell anyone," Danny says, leaning closer across the armrest and taking on the conspiratorial tone he uses with Charlie. "I have a reputation to uphold, you know."

They both know Danny's distaste for Hawai'i disappeared with his ties nearly ten years ago, but if Steve is allowed his see-through diversions from his emotions then so is Danny.

The quiet that falls between them is one Danny knows well, and he waits patiently for Steve, like usual. Like always.

Steve clears his throat, and he's looking down at the palms of his hands when he speaks. "I didn't know – I didn't know this place meant so much to you," he says, and Danny, for a moment, wonders if Steve is being obtuse on purpose, but no. They've crossed the line from pretension now.

Danny sighs, a sort of half fond, half exasperated thing, and he wishes their chairs were closer so he could hold onto the sides of Steve's face. He settles for holding his hand out between their chairs, wiggling his fingers as Steve immediately, reflexively reaches for him and threads their fingers together.

"Have I taught you nothing in ten years?" Danny says, but it lacks its usual heat. "Do you ever listen when I talk?" _How could Steve not know?_ Danny thinks, _how?_ Has he really failed him this deeply?

The sun's dropped into the sea by now, and the lingering vestiges of twilight are starting to fade. It hides a fair bit of Steve's face in growing darkness, but Danny knows him well enough to see him without his eyes.

"Of course I listen," Steve says, automatic, faux-affronted, and then furrows his brows. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how I've spent the last decade with _you_ , babe. I'm talking about how many times you've saved my life, how many times _you've_ made this island feel like home. I'm talking about how I know Grace calls you once a week because she wants to talk to you just as much as she wants to talk to me, and how all Charlie ever wants to do is spend time with you. I'm talking about the therapy, and the sick days, and all the trouble we've been through to stay together, all the work we've put in to get to here, right now."

Danny squeezes their hands together, since Steve is too far to hold.

"I'm not talking about the house, Steven. Or the beach. It's not about the location."

Steve's looking at him, unreadable for all that he's wide-eyed and vulnerable, and Danny loves him so much it hurts sometimes.

"It's about you, babe," Danny says, and it sounds a little bittersweet, maybe, if only for the fact he's had to spell it out like this. Or maybe because he's never thought to do it before. "It's always been about you. You're my peace."

And Steve, after the immediate shock, finds the truth of it in his bones, where it's been for so long, waiting for him to accept it. Danny's been the one constant in his life, the one thing that never changes, never wavers.

"Oh," Steve says, an exhale. He sinks back into the chair, deflated. "Yeah. I knew that."

Danny lets out a matching breath. "Good," he says, sounding genuinely relieved. "I was worried there, for a minute, that you didn't know."

Steve looks at their hands hanging between the seats, Danny's fingers threaded so perfectly, so familiarly with his own.

"I think I just didn't realize," Steve tells him. "Maybe, I thought, if I didn't realize it, then I couldn't lose you, too."

Danny scoffs. "Like you could lose me even if you wanted to," he says, and Steve squeezes their hands together.

"You're pretty good at keeping me on my toes about it," Steve reminds him. He looks at Danny and sees the bombs, the beatings, the bullet wounds –

"There's nothing strong enough to take me away from you if I don't want it to," Danny says, and his voice is full of so much conviction that Steve feels it too. All those things, and they've made it through every single one.

"Lucky me," Steve says, and he means it to be joking, but there's too much truth behind it that it falls somewhere short. He looks up at the sky, at all the constellations he knows so well from years at sea, and thinks about how Danny's a little like a land constellation. Maybe a part of him knew all along that _his_ peace was never going to be a place.

"Damn right, lucky you," Danny says, and he falls short, too, his laugh nothing more than an exhale.

Steve, here, now that he's let himself let go, finally finds what he's been looking for, what he couldn't quite find at the market or on the mountain or in the office. There's a slight breeze coming in with the tide, the waves are soft and predictable against the sand, there's not a cloud in the sky, and Danny's hand is warm and perfect in his own.

"I'm sorry it took me so long," Steve says, quiet into the night, and he's talking about more than just Danny's steadfast company. Danny huffs beside him.

"I don't care," he says, and means it. "As long as you figured it out in the end. As long as you're happy."

It's so _Danny_ , so full of the unhurried, unassuming love he's been showing Steve for years that Steve wonders how he could've ignored it for so long. Wonders why he ever thought he could live without it.

"Yeah," Steve says. He turns from watching the ocean to look at Danny. "Yeah. I'm happy," he says, and Danny looks to him, too, eyes shining like the stars above them. There's so much love pouring out of him Steve could drown in it. Maybe has, already. "I'm at peace."

"Good," Danny tells him. "That's all I've ever wanted for you, you know. Peace. Calm."

Steve squeezes their hands again.

"I love you," he says, and, for the first time, lets it mean everything he's wanted it to mean.

Danny's answering grin is one Steve wants to wake up to, wants to fall asleep to, wants to spend every day of his life seeing.

"I love you too, babe," Danny says. "Always have, always will."

**Author's Note:**

>  _disclaimer: i have only seen seasons 1-4 and the final 2 episodes of season 10. i really have no idea abt the new folks so sorry for any major ooc-ness_  
> 
> 
> this is version one of me dealing with the bullshit finale. plotless fluff bc im mad abt it
> 
> also, the three things danny has a short answer to are: i love you; i miss you; will you marry me
> 
> maybe i'll write that fic eventually


End file.
